


Drinking Games

by scratchesdownyourback



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Hidden Feelings, M/M, One Shot, Possibly Two Shot, Sad Pining, Slightly Aged up, Some angst, They love each other, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, but they have issues, but they're still cute, kind of a song fic i guess?, they're like 17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22577707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scratchesdownyourback/pseuds/scratchesdownyourback
Summary: "You dance with our friends, shining, laughing with them like you weren't just crying to me.But you know what I see when you're looking at me?I am reminded that we'll never be."Being a teenager is hard.Being a teenager who has untreated trauma from fighting an evil nightmare clown at 13 is harder.Being a gay teenager in the 90s who has untreated trauma from fighting an evil nightmare clown at 13 and is heavily suppressing feelings for his best friend is really, really fucking hard.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	Drinking Games

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on Silver Sphere's song with the same title.

"What?", Eddie shouted, his voice barely audible over the music that was thumping all throughout the house.

_Eat the rich - there's only one thing that they are good for_

_Eat the rich - take one bite now, come back for more_

"I said I'm glad you came! I was worried you wouldn't show. Want me to grab you a drink?", Richie repeated, slower this time, stepping closer to Eddie so he could understand. The other boy just rolled his eyes.

"I'll just get myself a glass of water, I drove here so I won't be drinking."

Richie's face fell. "For real? No, Eds, please! It'll be no fun without you!"  
He was well into his third cup of strong vodka and Coke, giving Eddie his best pleading eyes.

"And what's the alternative, dumbass? I drive home drunk?"

"You could stay over!", Richie offered, looking hopeful.

"I'm not having this conversation with you again."  
Eddie turned away from his tall friend and steered towards some of the groups of people crowding the rooms of Richie's parents' small house.

"Hi Bill!", he beamed, spotting his friend. "Thank god you're here, Richie is already being an obnoxious piece of shit. Are the others coming?"

"I d-didn't speak to them a-after school, but I think they were planning on it." Bill took a sip from his cup, grimacing at the taste.  
"Richie a-always adds way too much vodka. And why's a-all the coke lukewarm?"

"You're drinking? Am I gonna end up being the only sober one?"

Bill just shrugged apologetically. "I took the b-bike here."

Eddie huffed, heading to the kitchen to passive-aggressively get himself some water.

He was pissed off, mostly at himself for showing up at this party at all. He hated hanging out with all these people that were barely acquaintances to him and that he had nothing in common with just to get drunk, but mostly he hated himself and the decisions he made when he did drink with them. He hated that he couldn't resist the invitation despite himself, because he was a sucker for the way his bad decisions made him feel, at least for the moment.

Eddie hated it more than he could say, but he needed to be here just as much as he needed to get up in the morning to start his day and like he needed to breathe to survive.

These parties had become a comically awful routine in his life. He'd go, wait for an intoxicated Richie to inevitably get him alone, listen to him laughing, crying and whispering secrets and sweet nothings that made Eddie's chest ache just to then watch him join the party again later, acting as if nothing had happened.  
Eddie couldn't help but jump at any chance that would get him alone with Richie, that would get his attention all on him and allow him to hear those words he so badly wanted to be true.

"Eddie, my love, come over here!", Richie yelled drunkenly from the other room just as Eddie was bitterly finishing his water. "We're playing truth or drink!"

He rolled his eyes again, heading to the others. "I'm not even drinking, what's the point?"

"Guess you'll have to tell the truth then!", Richie winked.

"Great." He sat down between two relative strangers regardless of his complaints. Someone spun the bottle and Eddie kept his fingers crossed underneath his thighs, hoping it wouldn't land on him. The music that was being blasted by awfully cheap speakers was filling his senses and he could feel his heart rate pick up.

_And when I see you, happy as a girl that swims in a world of a magic show,_

_It makes me bite my fingers through to think I could've let you go_

The bottle ended up pointing at a blonde boy Eddie recognized from his English class.

"Stevie!", Richie blurted out. "I'm the host, so I get to pick the first question!"  
He pretended to be in deep thought for a moment.  
"Have you ever hooked up with anyone that's in this room right now?"  
Stevie turned a suspicious shade of red and nodded.

"That was fucking stupid, Richie, now we won't know who it was with! You suck at asking the questions!", Bev booed from the other side of the circle.

"Shut up, Bev, wait your turn!", Richie replied, flipping her off half-heartedly. "Anyways Steves, your turn to spin!"

The blonde boy complied, leaning forward to give the bottle a push. It landed on Katie, a quiet girl with nerdy glasses that Eddie had worked on a science project with in the past. She didn't look like she wanted to be there either.  
"How many people have you kissed?", Steve asked, getting straight to the point. Katie seemed to think about the question for a second before gesturing for the vodka bottle. The crowd erupted into cheers.

The game went on, the questions varying between extremely raunchy and almost boringly tame.  
Eddie didn't really care about any of it, zoning out to the music instead and tapping his foot to the beat distractedly.

_I can't dance, I can't sing, I'm just standing here selling everything_

He was only half-listening when one of the shy-seeming boys he'd never talked to before asked Alex from his Algebra class a question.  
"Who in this circle do you think has the prettiest eyes?"  
A few people groaned at the unadventurous question.  
"That's gotta be Eddie.", Alex replied, looking right at him.

Eddie couldn't believe what he was hearing.  
He'd come out as gay a few months earlier and had so far, to his surprise, mostly been left alone about it.  
People outside his friend group tended to ignore it, awkwardly avoiding the topic of dating or crushes around him in general, but other than that it had been fine.  
He had never even considered the notion that there could be another gay kid at his high school, let alone one that would openly express interest in him. 

The most logical conclusion was that Alex was fucking with him, so Eddie decided to just say nothing in response.  
He still couldn't fight the heat that was violently flooding his cheeks.

An awkward silence had formed, people didn't seem to know how to react to the interaction.

"Ha! Good pick.", Richie broke the quiet and got up from his spot in the circle.  
He pretended to be fiddling with the cassette player for a second before plopping down next to Eddie instead.  
"Spin the bottle already, dumbass, you're holding up the game.", Richie shot at Alex, friendly but with an edge of annoyance in his voice that Eddie picked up on.

After a few more turns, Richie leaned over to him and whispered in his ear.  
"Eds, do you wanna get out of here for a bit?"

Eddie swallowed. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't been waiting for this, that this wasn't why he came here in the first place.  
He was filled to the brim with nervous excitement and early regret.  
He nodded slowly and looked around the room. Everyone else seemed caught up in the game, too distracted to notice them leaving.  
He got up, following Richie through the hallway and out the front door.

The chilly night air hit him like a punch in the face.  
"God, why's it so cold out here? It's fucking May!", Richie asked pointlessly, slightly slurring his words.  
He'd already been well on his way to drunk before the game had even started, and had then proceeded to drink at every turn while giving all the answers anyway.

"Wanna go for a drive?", Eddie sighed, searching for a scenario in which he wouldn't have to look at Richie the whole time. He didn't know if he could handle that.

"Yeah."

Eddie led the way to his mum's car which he'd borrowed for the night, pushing the worry of Richie throwing up in it as far back as he could.  
"Why do there have to be so fucking many stars?", Richie asked, looking up at the sky.  
He sounded gloomy, almost hopeless, and Eddie didn't know what he meant, so he said nothing in return.

When they reached the car parked at the end of the street, Eddie got in first, but only after saying: "If you fucking throw up in this car, my mum will fucking kill both of us."

"What a way to go!", Richie winked at him.

"Fuck off.", Eddie replied, starting the car.

He was angry again, mostly at himself for putting himself in this situation, but also at Richie for leaving him no choice.  
There never seemed to be one with Richie. Sometimes he felt like he'd follow his stupid pain in the ass of a friend to the end of the world if he asked.

"So, Alex, huh?", Richie began.

"What about him?"

"He likes you.", he pointed out stupidly.

"He doesn't even know me. He was probably joking." Eddie was tired of this topic of conversation already.  
He tried focusing on the road, driving with no direction.

"I don't think he was.", the taller boy contradicted stubbornly.

"What's it to you, anyway?", Eddie looked over at his friend, irritated.

"I don't like him." Richie sounded annoyed, too.

"Since when?!"

"Today. Maybe always. I don't know."

"You're not making any sense."

  
There was silence.

  
Eddie broke it.

"Richie, why do you do this? Every fucking weekend you throw these parties just to leave them after a few hours every time like you're on the run, dragging me along with you. What's wrong with you?"

"I don't know."

"No, I mean it! There's something up and you're not telling us!"

"Fuck, I don't know!" Richie's voice sounded strangled now.  
"It's like, it's like I need to have all these people around me and drink all this alcohol to keep myself distracted or I'll go insane, but then it's all there and it's all so much all of a sudden and it's not helping at all, it feels like nothing's ever helping.  
And I just want so badly to be cool and be okay and move on like you guys, but I just can't seem to!  
When it's quiet and I'm alone, I still hear _Its_ voice. I can't stop feeling like I felt when I first saw _It_. I felt like I was getting better for a while, but for the past year or two it's just all been coming back to haunt me and I can't get rid of it. It keeps just getting worse." 

Richie was crying now. It wasn't loud, or messy, or big, or chaotic. It wasn't a punchline to one of his jokes. For a moment, everything else faded, except for the quiet, hopeless tears rolling down his cheeks, no noise accompanying them, no attempt being made to conceal them.

"I'm sorry.", he choked out, breathless.

"Shit, Richie.", Eddie said, pulling over to the side of the road.

At his friend's words, all of Eddie's protective walls of snappiness and anger had crumbled at once, leaving his love for the other boy out in the open, so strongly and suddenly that it almost hurt. Even looking at Richie felt too vulnerable, too intimate.

"I dream of _It_ sometimes, you know. Quite frequently, actually. It often takes me hours to fall asleep. I'm not just cool with it either.", he said, softly, searching for something else to say, for the right thing, anything to make Richie feel okay, but finding nothing.  
There were tears in his own eyes too now.

Richie looked like he was going to say something else, but changed his mind before he did. After a few long minutes of silence, he added, almost impossibly quietly:  
"I feel alright when I'm with you, Eds. You make it all better."  
There was something else there, something big and unsaid behind his eyes.

Instead of giving a response, Eddie looked at his friend and wiped one of the tears on his cheek away with his thumb.

"Wanna head back?", Eddie suggested softly after another quiet moment.

  
Richie nodded.

When they arrived back at the party, Richie stormed in, suddenly full of life and energy again.  
He was unrecognizable from moments before.

"Bev!", he shouted. "Pass me that bottle, would ya?"  
Richie took a big swig of the vodka, spitting some out when Jump by Kris Kross came on.  
"God, I fucking hate this song! Let's dance!", he cheered and grabbed Beverly and Bill by their arms, dragging them to the makeshift dance floor.  
They were moving with enthusiasm but without much coordination or elegance.

Eddie watched as his friends jumped up and down happily, still stunned by Richie's complete 180.  
He felt emotionally drained, having sensed his friend's fears so deeply and strongly only moments earlier, and having opened a door to his own feelings that now felt harder to close than before. The idea of dancing to a shitty guilty pleasure song with his friends seemed absurd.

Richie's eyes met Eddie's from across the room. 

All of a sudden, the weight of everything that was between them yet could never be felt impossible to bear.

Eddie gave him a sad smile and left. 


End file.
